Tag Archives: End time revival

Many signs are pointing to the fact that the return of Christ is imminent. There will be a falling away of lukewarm, uncommitted churchgoers, but there will also be a great harvest of new, true disciples as the Holy Spirit prepares Christ’s spotless bride in readiness for His return.

Be prepared; hold on., Walking in the Spirit

The Coming Harvest

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“Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD,
“When the ploughman shall overtake the reaper,
And the treader of grapes him who sows seed;
The mountains shall drip with sweet wine,
And all the hills shall flow with it.” (Amos 9:13)

The New Testament gives us a clear picture of what is meant spiritually by sowing and reaping. The word of God is sown through teaching and preaching, and the harvest is reaped when those hearts where they were sown accept Christ. Much of the ministry of the Church hinges on the activities of sowing and reaping, of teaching and evangelism.

But God is preparing us for another, and greater harvest. Although sowing and reaping will carry on, the work of preparing for the coming harvest will overtake the work of the current one. The apostolic and the prophetic will run ahead of the teacher and the evangelist, ploughing the land and treading the grapes. Ploughing the land and treading the grapes have this in common: they break through the surface layers and break up structures. The plough breaks up the soil; treading breaks down the grapes. I believe the Lord wants to break up our well-trodden paths and move below the skins of our relationships. Even as the devil seeks to use lockdown to keep us apart, the Lord will work in our lives to bring us together and move us towards true Unity of the Spirit.

I believe the Lord would say: “Why is the soil hard? Because you have walked in the same places for so long that the soil is trampled down; the seeds of the Word do not take root and the birds of the air devour them. So I am sending out the ploughman to break up the ground again, so my seeds can take root and grow.

And why is the wine not flowing? Because you hold and treasure your clusters of grapes instead of letting the juice flow from them, and you are content with superficial relationships in which people remain separate and isolated within their own protective skins, instead of truly giving themselves to one another. So I am sending out those who will tread on the traditions, the forms and the routines that you hold onto, and they will break them down so that the life of My Spirit can be released in your worship. And I will move in your relationships and break through those defensive skins that keep you apart; and as I am in the Father and the Father is in me, you, too, will become perfect in one, and the world will see your love and will know that you are my disciples. The world does not want your well-trodden paths, but it will seek out the life that it sees growing when the plough has broken them up. The world does not see your clusters, but it will see your love when the grapes are trodden and the wine is flowing.”

Before the harvest comes the plough, and before the new wine comes the treading. When this time comes many will feel they have nowhere to stand and nothing to hold onto; but the Lord says “Stand on my Word, and hold onto Me. Do not resist the breaking, and receive those who appear to tread on things that you would preserve, because when the work of preparation is done those who sow will again see fruit; ten, twenty and a hundredfold; and those who reap will not have barns big enough for the harvest.”

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Prophesy and the prophetic

The Cage and the Building

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Susie Molina and Jarrod Cooper both received a “word for 2021,“ posted UK Prophetic Releasers facebook page and on ukpropheticwords.blogspot.com. Jarrod had a dream in which many of “his” congregation streamed out of the church while he was at the front leading the meeting: when he asked the Lord why this was, he was told that they were leaving in order to go out on the streets and preach the gospel. The dream was an illustration of the words “The Church has left the building.” Susie, in the two visions “The caged lion and the staircase” writes of the church as a tired, weakened lion lying in a cage with the door open – free to leave but choosing to remain. “…Due to his long confinement, the lion had not been mentally and physically prepared and fit to see the enemy attack come and deal with it well because he had forgotten how to respond like a true lion in the wild. Chosen confinement, false comfort and increasing apathy had compromised and dulled his natural responses.”

As I read these two messages I saw that the two are closely coupled: the “cage” is the “building.” Many prophetic voices are talking about a shaking of the establishment, about new equipping, new anointing, new release for ministry for the coming season, but I believe that central to all of this is the following:

God is doing a realignment of leadership in the church and will establish Ephesians 4:11-13 as a foundational principal of ministry. I believe the Lord says: “I am going to re-align the five-fold ministries with their original purpose. I did not give these ministry gifts to build my church. I will do that. They were not given for platforms and audiences, for I am your platform and I am your audience. I gave them ‘for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,’ so that all can go out and make disciples. For making disciples is the work of ministry. I build my church; you make disciples. In building, apostles were given to equip the saints to build; in prophesying, prophets were given to equip others to prophesy; evangelists to equip to preach the gospel, pastors to equip to lead, and teachers to equip others to teach and understand my Word. I am taking my church back, and I am releasing my ministry gifts to release others to make disciples in the power of my Spirit, and they will go out and make more disciples because they too have been equipped. Because this is how I have always planned it, and this is the time when you will see my plans being realised. Freely you have received; freely give. As you flow, you will grow. Where there were congregations within walls, there will be conflagrations of holy fire beyond the walls. This is how my glory will be revealed and how my Bride will come to maturity. I am restoring the wild instincts of the lion, and she will shake off her apathy and come out of the building that has caged her in for so long, and she will roar on the streets. And it is the roar of the Lion of Judah that will be heard.”

Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Launch out into the Deep

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“So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net. And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.” (Luke 5 vs 1-7)

When I read the above passage of scripture this morning, I felt that the Lord gave me the following word. I believe it is for all of us to an extent, but particularly for those who feel, like Simon Peter did, that they have been ‘toiling all night and catching nothing,’ whose ministry has been “beached” by COVID, and who now have nothing better to do than sit on the shore and wonder about where their ministry is going. I believe the Lord would say this:

“It feels to you that your boat is pulled up on the shoreline. You aren’t catching fish at the moment so you are thinking about your ministry. Before you came ashore you had been working hard but catching nothing, so now you are thinking about your net and how you can improve it so that you can catch fish when you go out again.  But even now I am walking along the shoreline towards you. You don’t need to do any more to your net, because I am going to get into your boat myself. Your ministry isn’t about how good your net is, or what you do to make it better; it’s about me being in the boat and launching out with you into the deep , because that is where the fish are.  And together we will catch so many fish that you will feel overwhelmed; you will feel as if you are sinking under the weight of the catch. Will you launch out with me anyway? Will you come with me into the deep and face being overwhelmed?

So look up from your net and look out for me, because I am walking towards you. And when we get back into the shore you won’t be sitting by your nets again, making sure they are good enough and discussing them with your friends; but you will be walking with me, going wherever I go and doing whatever I do. And that is when you will be fishers of men.”

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Prophesy and the prophetic

Signs of the Times

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This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith…

As we look at the USA, Covid, and the rest of it, we can easily take our eyes off things above and dwell on what we see in the world. But what is happening in the world is only a reflection of what is taking place in the Spirit, and some of the scenario of the spiritual battle is given to us – cryptically, I know – in the book of Revelation. When tears come to our eyes – as they do to mine, when I miss my grandchildren – we need to remember that the day is coming when He will wipe all those tears away. But before then, we are called to watch and pray. And if we watch, there are some things that are visible, but which point to the bigger picture. Here is a little snapshot of a bit of it:

A lady (in the USA) with a small Ebay business sold patriotic items, which she advertised on facebook. Facebook (and possibly Ebay as well, but I’m not sure about that detail) closed her down, because use of the terms “patriot” and “patriotic” are now “contrary to their policies.” She now no longer trades. Because of Facebook’s perceived anti-republican stance, many Christians and other republicans turned to a small rival to FB called “Parler” which some of you may have heard of. Parler is French for “to speak”, and it’s a platform that champions freedom of expression – in particular, but of course not exclusively, freedom to speak what God speaks. Parler used Amazon’s online web services platform. Amazon has now closed down Parler.

Following the Capitol Hill demonstration, the Facebook mouthpieces have justified their policy by saying that encouraging patriotism can incite violence. Yet FB has kept complete silence over all the Black Lives Matter rampages throughout 2020, so their policy has nothing to do with violence and everything to do with who they want to silence.  What is actually happening is that the online giants are closing ranks against those who do not agree with their liberal policies. I only know of that one lady who has lost her business so far, but I’m sure there will be more, and we can only see the “you can only use our platform if we agree with you” trend continuing.

Perhaps you can see where this is going? It’s Revelation chapter 13, verse 17 in particular: “No one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” If this seems far off, we need to look again, because that lady who loves her country and what it stands for would say that it’s already beginning to happen.

Meanwhile COVID continues to stalk the globe, and the thin ice of the world economy gets thinner by the day as it trades its mountain of make-believe printed money. By now we’ve all heard of bitcoin and blockchain, and some of us may have used it. The solution to a worldwide economic collapse would be a complete reset to a digital currency. China has already successfully trialled one – the E Rmb – in several cities, including Chengdu and Shenzhen. And in the Covid arena again, a comprehensive and international “track and trace” programme would seem to be an obvious development to combat the virus. It would also be very useful to governments trying to close down the Church. The digital cloud covers the whole of the world.

This of course is speculative. But what could we have, if we put these threads together – and it may not be as far away as we would like to think –  may be something like this:

“We are the digital state. We do not have national boundaries. The nations belong to us, and we belong to the Prince of the Power of the Air, because we are the Cloud. We know who you are and where you come in and go out. You cannot trade unless you sign up to our policies, and our policies exclude the Church of Jesus Christ. You cannot trade unless you use our currency. If you do not belong to us you will be cut off from society, and you will die.”

We need to look beyond the cloud, and look to the things above, where the Sun of Righteousness is shining. Because He will break through. The currency of the World may well end up as bitcoin, but the currency of the Kingdom is faith, and “This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” (1 John 5:4) And amongst Kingdom businesses and financial organisations, God is already raising up an Ark of resources where this currency is in operation and where God’s people will be able to find shelter from the coming flood. So hen we see the news and read the papers, let us also be sure to read the signs of the times. Let us watch and pray, because we do not know the day or the hour…

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect

Prepare the Way of the Lord

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“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make straight in the desert 
A highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth;

The glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’” (Isaiah 40: 3-5)

Scripture is clear about where the glory of the Lord shall be revealed: “Unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever;” (Eph 3:21) or as Jesus Himself puts it: “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” (John 17: 22-23)

However, the highway by which He chooses to come is by way of the desert. The world is becoming more like a desert on a daily basis, but it is precisely when the world is in a desert place that His glory will be revealed in the church,  and “all flesh” will see it. Luke quotes Isaiah to declare four areas in which the Holy Spirit will “prepare the way” while this is happening and before the world sees the Glory of the Lord.

Every valley shall be exalted.

Luke renders this as “every valley shall be filled,” when he quotes the prophet in Luke 3:5. What are our valleys? When we lose sight of the place that we have been lifted to; whenever our souls are cast down; when the Victory of the cross is on the far side of the mountains – these are that the Lord is going to fill. A particular valley we read about in Scripture is the valley of Achor, where Achan and all his family were executed for keeping back some of the plunder from Jericho. It’s the place of judgement, condemnation and death. It’s where the accuser will always seek to bring us. However there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), so Isaiah 65:10 says:

“Sharon shall be a fold of flocks,
And the Valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down,
For My people who have sought Me.”

And Hosea writes:

“I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope;
She shall sing there,
As in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.” (Hosea 2:15)

In Christ, the valley of condemnation becomes the place of peace, hope, and the joy of our salvation. If we bring our valleys to the Lord, He will “exalt” them as He lifts us again, and He will fill them with His presence as we praise Him for our deliverance from bondage.

Every mountain and hill shall be brought low

Just as the Holy Spirit can’t “prepare the way of the Lord” until He has dealt with our valleys, we also need Him to deal with our peaks – our mountains and hills.

Proverbs 29:23 tells us exactly what our peaks are: “A man’s pride will bring him low.” When Mary magnifies he Lord, she says

“He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.” (Luke 1 51-52)

These and many other scriptures make it clear that the Lord will deal with any areas where we seek to exalt ourselves before His glory will fill our lives. The flesh wants to promote itself, protect itself, control and be noticed; the Spirit seeks only to Glorify God, love and serve. Our example of course is Jesus, who “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:8)  If the Glory of the Lord is going to come in, there can be no peaks in the way. They have to die with Jesus on the cross.

The crooked places shall be made straight

Jesus calls The Holy Spirit “The Spirit of Truth,” and He Himself is, of course, the Truth. When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards Him, He said: ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!’ (John 1:47). Revelation 21:8 says categorically that “all liars” are destined for the lake of fire. Satan is the “Father of Lies,” the creator of crooked places. The Spirit of Truth will come and purge every tendency to conceal the truth. Where we have believed a lie, He will reveal it; and where we have let others believe a lie He will bring us to repentance. Wherever the father of lies has brought his distortions into our lives, the Holy Spirit will make those crooked places straight, so that we can all, like Nathaniel, be “Israelites indeed.”

And the rough places smooth

What are our “rough places?” Where are we abrasive? Are we gentle in our dealings with others? Are our relationships made smooth by the fruit of the Spirit being manifest in our lives, or do we have rough places here people are hurt or damaged if they bump into us? If Christ is going to fill our lives with the glory of God, these rough places need to be confessed and submitted to Him. If people have been hurt by them we need to repent and seek their forgiveness. We cannot be rough with one another and love one another at the same time.

The Glory of God will fill the Church when He has dealt with judgement and pride in our lives and has made us pure conduits of truth and love.  When that happens “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:6)

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

The Stage is Set

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I was looking at an image of a stage with the curtains drawn across and the spotlight shining on the curtains. Then I felt the Lord say this:

The Lord has set the stage and is assembling His cast. Our lines are written in Heaven, according to Ephesians 2:10. He says to us now: “Learn your parts. For your parts are not playacting, they are the eternal reality of my Spirit. What is on the stage will not pass away; it is not just there for a season; it is built for eternity.“

An actor who comes out of role on stage is said to “corpse.“ The Lord says to us: “Your role is the reality. The spirit is your reality. Walk in the spirit, and do not corpse by walking after the flesh. The world thinks it is here to stay, and it is always fighting to stay; but the truth is the opposite: you are here to stay, and the world and all that is in it is passing away. Soon I will be drawing back the curtains to reveal what is on the stage that I have set, and my church will act the parts that I have prepared for them. But the spotlight will not be on you; it will be on Me. The Acts of the Apostles was just a prelude to what I have prepared for these times. Listen for my cues; wait for my cues; always move on cue and do not corpse. The world will begin to see who you are and who I am in your midst. The first act is coming; there will be many more acts after this, until the time comes for the final bow. So I say to you again: learn your parts, do not corpse, listen for my cues. And do not fear, for I am renewing faith among my people. You will enjoy the thrill of being in my theatre.”

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Dabbling Ducks and Goosanders

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Goosanders: sawbilled fisher ducks, swimming in the deeper water.

In a pond near where I live there are two types of waterfowl: there are dabbling ducks, and there are goosanders. The dabbling ducks (mallards and a couple of domesticated spieces) on this pond are so called because they feed on or near the surface of the water, mostly on aquatic vegetation, small molluscs etc. And of course on whatever is thrown in for them by people who go along, usually with children, to “feed the ducks.” We commonly see these ducks “dabbling” as they upend in the water to feed.  Goosanders are altogether different. Although still a type of duck, they belong to a group called “sawbills,” that have thinner beaks with serrated edges for catching and gripping fish. And not just tiddlers – a goosander will grapple with a trout or perch, or even a salmon, nearly as big as the bird itself.

Jesus has sent us, His disciples, out to “catch fish” – to be fishers of men, like Peter. We don’t need to be reminded of the story of Peter’s life, and the transformation that he underwent at Pentecost. We probably know his story best of all, because he tended to go for the “epic fail” rather than just the ordinary fail; but none of the disciples actually caught on to any of the Kingdom truths that Jesus was feeding them until the Holy Spirit brought all His words to life at Pentecost. For three years they had been dabbling ducks that understood nothing of catching fish. But when the Holy Spirit fell they were transformed into sawbilled goosanders, and they began fishing for men.

In a pond like this one, a significant portion of the dabblers’ diet is what is fed to them by local humans. You will probably see them congregating on one side of the pond, in the shallow water where they can get to the aquatic vegetation and where the food is thrown in. But here is the point: dabbling ducks do not grow into goosanders. It doesn’t matter how much, or how well, you feed them; to become goosanders equipped to catch fish they have to be transformed into sawbills, and only an encounter with the Holy Spirit can bring that about. Without people having that encounter you just have a pond full of dabblers. Jesus loves them of course, and loves to feed them, as we all do; but what He longs for even more is to see them continue their journey in the Spirit just as Peter and the rest of His original flock of dabblers did.

For some churches, it is a central platform of their ministry to create a current in the water that will lead all the dabblers out of the shallows and into the deeper waters where they can be transformed by the Holy Spirit. For others, the sawbills are there because they happened to fly in, or because they wandered over to the deep water on their own individual journey round the pond. For others still there might be large (or small) flocks of dabblers quacking and splashing, or maybe just sitting on the bank waiting for the food to arrive, but not a sawbill to be found. It is only one part of the church’s mission to put out good food that will attract the ducks. The other part is to lead every dabbler into the present power of the Holy Spirit, so that they become the sawbills that Jesus has called them to be.

I believe this is one of the Lord’s main priorities as He works on the overhaul of His church.

Christian Life, Living by Faith

By Faith

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(School of Prophesy 14 Nov 2020)

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

I enjoy cooking and do a lot of it. Some of my meals are experiments; some are “regulars.” Cooked breakfast based around bacon, eggs, mushrooms and tomatoes on Saturday morning is a “regular:” before I break the first egg I know what the complete meal will look like on the table and taste like when we eat it. I have faith for it. The word “substance,” in Hebrews 11: 1 is hypostasis, which literally means something that is “set under;” firm foundation that has actual substance. Elegchos, “evidence,” is just that: it’s proof of reality. That egg isn’t broken in a vague hope that somehow it will become scrambled and the rest of the  breakfast will also appear from an unexpected source: I have a track record of making  lot of breakfasts successfully. My faith in what is not yet seen has a substantial foundation and strong evidence to support it.

For a faith-filled walk with Jesus the same principles apply: the difference is that we put our trust in His “track record,” and not our own. We know that Hebrews 11:6 tells us “without faith it is impossible to please (God): for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,” but to see answers to our prayers, and, more importantly, to grow in our faith, I believe we have to be more focussed and specific in how we exercise it.

I think a key verse is John 15:16: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.”  We tend to connect “bearing fruit” with becoming more Christlike as we increasingly manifest the Galatians 5 fruit of the Spirit. However Jesus, whose likeness we seek, directly links fruitfulness with answered prayer. Whatever we ask in the name of Jesus the Father will give us, and that fruit will remain.

Anne and I own a small business. If I say to one employee: “John, go and ask Phil to fetch me a large box from the warehouse, please,” John will be passing an instruction on to Phil in my name. If John then just gives Phil a generic request to get me a container, and Phil comes back with a glass measuring jug, for example, did John pass on the request in my name? No. The measuring jug won’t do the job that I needed the box for. Jesus knows what He needs to build His Kingdom much better than we do, which is why Paul says in Romans 8:26 that we don’t know what to pray for. If we want our prayers to be answered we need to know what to ask for, and we have to hear this from Jesus by the Holy Spirit, because it’s in His name that we are asking.

Faith is like a muscle: it grows from exercise. The more we pray according to the Holy Spirit’s instructions, the more we will see our prayers answered; and the more we see answers to prayer, the more we will seek God for what to ask for. And so we begin to develop our own personal track record, not of what we’ve done, but of what we’ve seen Jesus do; and our faith grows until we start to see those “greater things” happening through our prayers that Jesus has promised us. No more should our faith be like a grappling hook on the end of a long rope that we sling in God’s direction, in the hope that we can hang onto something substantial: the evidence and the substance of the outcome that we are praying for, in the name of Jesus and according to His instructions, can be seen in the history of answered prayers that we already have accumulated.

Psalm 2: 8 says “Ask Me, and I will give the nations as Your inheritance.” God told Heidi Baker to ask Him for a nation, and she asked Him for Mozambique. He gave it to her: multiple thousands have been saved and healed in that country, and others around it, since then, and Iris Ministries was born. Heidi Baker had already exercised her faith muscle enough for the Lord to know that He could trust her with that prayer. She was a long way past “breakfast.” She has borne fruit a hundredfold, and many times a hundredfold, and has been living in a season of “greater things” for many years. So yes, God will indeed give us “anything we ask:” He said so, therefore it must be true. There is no limit to His ability and desire to give to His children. But we have to ask according to our faith. When the two blind men approached Jesus after He had raised Jairus’s daughter and asked for healing, He said to them:   “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” (Matt. 9:28). So “Then He touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.” Like those blind men, we have to see by faith what God is going to do.

Where are we in our faith journey? Are we on the road to the “greater things,” or are we still standing in the same place with our grappling hook, and just hoping God will reach out and grab it when it’s thrown? The disciples asked Jesus to teach us how to pray, and in the Lord’s Prayer He gave us a series of chapter headings on the different areas that we should cover. (For more on this topic, see “Praying with Jesus, by Paul Yonggi Cho; written in 1988, but just as fresh today.) If we are still just praying the chapter headings, we haven’t learnt anything. If we are praying for “all the sick in our town,” or even in our church, we haven’t learnt anything. It’s not what Jesus wants us to do. He wants us to pray for other people out of our relationship with Him, asking the Father for what the Holy Spirit reveals to us as His will.

Like everything else in our journey, our prayers must spring out of our relationship with Jesus. If Jill’s life is in a mess and our hearts goes out to her, it’s not enough to say, “Lord, Jill’s life is in a mess. Please sort her out!” That’s just a grappling hook with nowhere to land. The test is simple: where is the faith that is the evidence and the substance of the answer? It’s not there. But if we ask the Holy Spirit for revelation, and we get a sense of a particular problem in Jill’s life that the Lord wants to address, then we can have faith for a clear outcome that becomes the substance of our prayers. Our prayers will flow from our relationship with Jesus, not our relationship with Jill. This is one of the reasons why the Holy Spirit gives words of Knowledge: if we know that God is going to open deaf ears in a meeting, because He has told us, we can step out and break the eggs, knowing that He is going to make the omelette.

As we move forward into the uncharted waters of today’s world, believing that God has got a great move of the Holy Spirit planned and knowing that the enemy will do everything he can to get in the way, it is of paramount importance that we grow in faith and keep moving along the path to those “greater things” of John 14:12. Like a parent on a busy sidewalk holding a child’s hand as they hurry to catch a train, Jesus is saying to us “Stay close!” The time is advancing quickly, but in His presence there is always provision and protection. If we ensure that our prayers always come from that proximity to Him we will bear fruit to His glory and our faith will grow. But if, in the full knowledge of Romans 8:26 we continue to pray without knowing what to pray for, we will be standing still while Jesus leads those who are staying close towards the station. And when that revival train pulls into the platform and the doors open for a few minutes, we won’t be getting on board.

If this article has helped you, please forward it to somebody else. We don’t want people missing the train.

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith

The Refit: Part two

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“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11:3)

We all know this verse – or if we don’t, it’s about time we did. What we may not be fully aware of is the full meaning of the Greek word katartizo which is translated in the above version (NKJ) as “framed”, and (weakly, I would say) as “formed” in the NIV. Here is the Strong’s definition:

“katartízō, kat-ar-tid’-zo; to complete thoroughly, i.e. repair (literally or figuratively) or adjust:—fit, frame, mend, (make) perfect(-ly join together), prepare, restore.”

This word katartizo  sits squarely on the picture of the Church’s mission plane undergoing a refit, which was one of the prophetic words brought to Wildwood and, I believe, to the wider church, on 8th Novenber. The word talks of God working on us by His creative power, so I want to unpack something of what I see in how we can respond to it. And before going any further I want to emphasise what a strong sense of His love and grace in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit it carries: He is going to repair, mend, and restore, both individual people and ministries. There will be adjustments to make and new parts to fit, so that we can be perfectly prepared and thoroughly complete for the mission ahead.

So I believe that God is going to refit the Church by the same process as He made the worlds, because that is what He works with. But if this is the case, Hebrews 11:3 teaches that we have to understand His workings by faith, not by human reason. Many years ago I was flying to Bolivia and was sitting in the transit lounge at Caracas (Venezuala) airport where our plane stopped to refuel. But while it was there on the tarmac just outside the transit lounge window, something else was going on. I looked on, horrified, as a mechanic with a toolbox stood at the bottom of a pair of steps, while another mechanic standing on the wing reached into one of the engines with something, shook his head, passed it down to his assistant and took something else to try.  Fortunately whatever it was must have worked, but I was very glad when that plane landed. But I don’t think God is planning a tinkering job just to get the plane over the next leg of the journey, and we cannot use the toolbox of our human reasoning on what we see in order to understand what He is going to do, because “katartizo” creates  by His Word out of things which are not visible.

We often use the word “grasp” when we talk of understanding. God has put His law into our hearts and written it on our minds: this is part of His new covenant with us. So although we cannot rationally understand the infinite dimensions of His provision, we can reach into the Spirit that He has given us and “grasp” them. I believe that this is what Jesus teaches when He talks about faith like a mustard seed in Matthew 17:20, and the faith that moves mountains in Mark 11:23. I believe that we can only do this by prayer and by revelation. So what “seeds” do we need to grasp by faith so that we can be ready for the refit? Here are four that are at the top of my list, which I offer in full knowledge of the fact that there are many, many others.

Who He is in us.
He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords; the universe was created by Him, through Him, and for Him; He is sovereign over all, and He dwells within us by His Spirit. If we worship Him in Spirit and in Truth, we acknowledge His total lordship over our lives. These are the worshippers that the Father is seeking. If we aren’t sensitive to His Spirit when we worship, we aren’t worshipping Him in spirit. If we aren’t in submission to His lordship, we aren’t worshipping Him in truth.

What He has done for us
“For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”(Heb 10:14). Although our sanctification is an ongoing process, Jesus has made us “perfect forever” in the sight of God by His sacrifice at the Cross, “Therefore … we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.” (Heb 10: 19) So although we may not think we are “good enough” or “mature enough” to be of any use in the purposes of God, we have all been “made perfect” before the Father and can therefore all draw near, whoever we are, to receive from His hand whatever He has for us and for those to whom He sends us.

What He has given us
As well as opening the way to the Father and giving us eternal life, giving us all the promises and principles of His Word, redeeming us from the curse if sin and death and pouring our His love and mercy into our hearts, God has given us precious and powerful gifts. Father, Son and Holy Spirit have all gifted the church and each of us as individuals in different ways. Father “has dealt to each one a measure of faith,” and we find His giftings in Romans 12: 3-8. The Son gave the five ministry gifts to the Church, and we find them in Ephesians 4: 11-12. The Holy Spirit distributes a variety of gifts “to each one as He wills” – 1 Cor 12 and 14. It is the combination of all of these gifts from the Godhead that enables the plane to fly properly as we follow the instructions that He has given us in the  flight manual – the Bible. I believe that they all need to be functioning fully if we are to be prepared for the next mission, and that God is going to focussing on all of them as part of the overhaul that He seems to be planning.

What He will do for us
He will do whatever we ask – as long as we abide in Him and His word abides in us. Greater works than Jesus did, because He has gone to the Father and left the power of resurrection life with His body, the Church. He will give us the power and authority to heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead in His name. He will provide for all our need according to His riches in Glory by Christ Jesus. He will be our strength and our shield in the battles that we are going to face. He will always be with us. Whatever we give He will give to us, but according to His dimensions – pressed down and running over it will be poured into our laps. He will give us our daily bread, forgive our sins, and deliver us from evil, and His Kingdom will come, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

This list is just a faint, watery thumbnail sketch of a handful of glimpses of the mighty Lord who loves us and lives in us and whom we serve. But if we can reach out with our faith and grasp even these principles I think we can be in a place where He is able to shine the beam of His light into the machinery of the aeroplane and begin the work of the refit. And if we want to have some idea of what might come out of the hangar when God has finished the refit, and just how far beyond ‘anything we could ask or imagine’ it is likely to be, have a look at Andrew Baker’s prophesy of The Amazing Plane.

I love the sound of the word Katartizo. It’s like something out of a superhero comic book when the hero saves the day.

Ka-boom! Katartizo!

Be prepared; hold on.

Time for a Refit

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Below is a summary of some words that were given by different people at a prayer meeting on 8th Nov, where a group from Wildwood Church gathered (by zoom) with prophetic ministers from associated churches to seek God for vision and direction. It is subjective, obviously, but I have endeavoured to include all the threads that I remember. What is striking is how well these individual threads seem to fit together to make a single cord; a coherent message. Although the Holy Spirit was speaking specifically into the particular context of Wildwood  Church, I have a sense that this message is for the wider church as well.

“The plane is coming in to land. It needs an overhaul and a refit to be prepared for its mission.”

“Well done. I am very pleased with you.”

“I have a sense that the engine is revving up.”

“God is going to shake up the bouncy castle. People will be bounced around and end up in an unexpected place or next to an unexpected person, but no-one is going to fall off so don’t be fearful when it happens.”

“An artist uses all his palette for all the picture. If he uses a colour in one part of the canvas, it doesn’t mean he isn’t going to use it somewhere else too. Don’t be rigid in how you use different people, but be flexible and let the Holy Spirit have His way.”

“Don’t despise the “Peter” among you – the one who opens his mouth at the wrong time and has a habit of putting his foot in it, who somehow doesn’t quite “fit the mould.” Remember how Peter was transformed by the Holy Spirit.”

“Let your love increase.”

“Isaiah 42:3 ‘A bruised reed He will not break,
And smoking flax He will not quench.’ In God’s strength Simon the reed became Peter the rock’.”

“Jeremiah 12:5 ‘And if in the land of peace,
In which you trusted, they wearied you,
Then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?’” (Click the link to read the full article.)

I believe they go together something like this:

“Revival will soon be flooding your land. At the moment you aren’t ready for what’s coming, and you need a refit. You have flown very well, but now it’s time for an overhaul before the next flight because there will be new and greater demands on you. This means that some people will be moved into new positions and new relationships will be formed. Some people might find their giftings being used in new and unexpected contexts and new giftings might emerge. Even now you may be aware of an increase in spiritual activity as I prepare to for this work. And let your love increase as I pour out mine, not just to those around you, but to those among you. Because in the midst of all this, people whom you might overlook, who seem like bruised reeds to the natural eye, will be transformed into rocks as they yield to the power of my Spirit, and they will stand firm in the coming flood.”